The Commerce Department: a bureaucratic hodge-podge where old habits die hard

Commerce Department Policies must be changed in order to preserve the economic miracle that has given our US citizens one of the highest living standards in the world. This standard of living was created by the Agricultural and Industrial Base that produced the food, goods, services and other items that we consumed, plus an excess of these goods & services that were produced and then sold to other foreign countries in order to accumulate the US gold reserves through a positive balance of trade surplus payments (in exchange for the products that we exported. Our gold reserves are the basis of the value or buying power of our currency. This was (is) true of all of the currencies in the world.

Infrastructure Pork Barrel jobs, environmental clean-up jobs, government jobs, make-work jobs, etc. are only short term fixes that do not address the long term problem. Only a positive balance of trade will restore the value of the dollar, and we must accomplish this by any means possible, or accept third world poverty on a large scale basis. Riots and insurrection are predictable, ala the French Revolution, when the people find their situations economically hopeless.

Our political and economic leaders seem to have decided that we can continue our economic miracle by becoming a service oriented society cooking hamburgers for each other using imported beef, imported vegetables, etc., selling insurance & junk bonds to each other, and suing each other, but definitely not manufacturing or creating anything that we consume. The only way that we can reverse this trend is to re-start making the things that we consume.

The only thing that will save the US Economy is the re-building of our gold reserves in order to preserve the buying power of the dollar. The only way to do this is to produce export more (dollar value of) things than we import. The only way that we can accomplish exporting is to re-industrialize and make these products with US materials & Labor. In the last few decades we have purposefully destroyed the industrial base that won WWII and gave us today's bountiful way of life. Paying people to pave roads, build infrastructure, plant trees, dig holes then refill the same holes, rake leaves, write poems, paint pictures, etc. will not be useful or contribute anything to correcting the US economic problem.

As long as the US government continues to just crank up the presses and print more dollars, T-Bills, Government Bonds, etc. to pay for these pork barrel projects, negative balance of trade, government payrolls, bailouts, entitlements, operations, social schemes, wars, new infrastructure, wealth re-distribution, mental health, and etc.

What if the US government prints up a bunch of new paper money and other similar paper securities to pay people to re-build and expand the US infrastructure (Pork Barrel Projects) in order to reduce unemployment, and it is all then spent on illegal aliens, imported earth-moving machinery, imported materials (Steel, equipment, Pipe & Wire), outsourced engineering, outsourced CAD drafting, immigrant labor, etc., and the US workers are still unemployed? This is probably necessary at this time, even if it will cause massive inflation to the point that it takes a week's wages to buy one loaf of bread. Any Economic Stimulus Spending also needs to prohibit any imported products (even if we no longer manufacture those products) from being purchased with these funds, and also prohibit all outsourcing of the Labor Required.

The dollar buying power or value is partly about psychology when it is backed by the "full faith and credit of the US government" rather than gold. This is the same as my definition of "Junk Bonds".

Since the US government stopped redeeming US dollars for gold, foreign governments and foreign individuals continue to use these freshly printed dollars (and other freshly printed US securities that they earned in exchange for their products that they exported to the USA) to purchase title to real estate, forests, industries, breweries, hotels, factories, casinos, financial institutions and everything else of value that is located in the USA. We paid these foreigners with our freshly printed dollars to manufacture or supply the things that we imported and consumed (rather than US citizens working to make these products ourselves in this country). Some government sources estimate that 25% of our property and businesses are now foreign owned (http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/ownership). What will be the buying power of the dollar when we have nothing left to redeem the dollars earned by foreigners?????????

There is (probably) a limit to the amount of paper dollars that the foreign country manufacturing people and the foreign country raw material supplying people will continue to accept in payment. This limit will become apparent as soon as foreigners own title to everything of value in the USA and nothing is left that the foreign dollar holders want to buy with their freshly printed paper dollars. This is selling of our children's legacy to foreign owners, and the US government calls it "Investing in America".

The USA population will probably become employees (or maybe slaves) to the foreign countries and individuals that will own everything of value in the USA. The foreigners know that these US dollars will buy less and less each day that they do not spend them. They also know that these securities are not redeemable for anything except the "full faith and credit of the USA" (aka junk bonds). Our children and grandchildren might also have to change to the religion of the business owner if they want a job.

Future nationalization of foreign owned assets (ala Mexico) is another discussion topic for another day.

It is not the foreign manufacturer's fault that this condition exists. We created this condition ourselves. We purposefully destroyed most of our industries and fired all of the employees that were located in the US for various reasons. Why should we work and make the things that we consume as long we can get people in other countries to work to make these things for our consumption? We can pay them with freshly printed-paper currencies and other types of freshly printed-paper securities (Junk Bonds). They can redeem these freshly printed-paper currencies by exchanging them for title to our real estate, hotels, forests, breweries, casinos, factories, and our remaining businesses (instead of Gold). Our Stupid Legislators, Ignorant Government Employees, Self Serving Corporate Managers, Greedy Unions, Wall Street Financial Genius Criminals, Enron and Arthur Anderson type Master Criminals, NAFTA, EPA, WTO, and OSHA, just to name a few, have created this situation.

How can we ever re-start our industries (re-industrialize) to generate a positive balance of trade that will restore our economy? Most of the men who knew how to operate the US basic industry and factories were fired 30 years ago and are now long dead. There are no books that completely tell how to do most of the things that we knew how to do years ago when we created the industries that won WWII and then gave us our bountiful way of life. We need science-oriented citizens to create products and services that we can exchange for foreign currency and foreign gold.

Our computer programming technology and expertise (Microsoft etc.) has helped our balance of payments considerably in the past, but the lack of technical education in this country today will soon destroy this export capability when foreign countries become better than the USA at creating new computer software programs.

Visit the Texas Medical Center (MD Anderson) and witness the percentage of women wearing Burkas to get a clue as to the percentage of foreign medical service income is received at the Texas Medical Center, and this improves our foreign trade balance.

We desperately need more scientists and engineers to innovate and produce new products to export and also to export services that will improve our balance of trade. We need to stop the H1B import of low paid scientific and engineering talent, in order to create a financial incentive for our students to major in technical and scientific subjects that are needed to re-industrialize the USA, instead of other topics that do not benefit the economy.

The USA needs protectionist tariffs to drastically reduce imports because our citizens do not want to work for the slave wages that foreign workers are happy to receive. Riots and insurrection are predictable, ala the French Revolution, when the people find their situations economically hopeless. In the last few decades we have purposefully destroyed the industrial bases that won WWII and gave us today's bountiful way of life. Pork Barrel projects that pay people to pave roads, build infrastructure, plant trees, dig holes then refill the same holes, rake leaves, write poems, paint pictures, environmental clean-up, etc. are not be useful and do not contribute anything to correcting the basic US economic problem. The only thing that will save the US Economy is the re-building of our gold reserves in order to preserve the buying power of the dollar. The only way to do this is to produce export more (dollar value of) things than we import. The only way that we can accomplish exporting is to re-industrialize and make these products with US materials & Labor. The only way that our products will be sold abroad is if these products are technologically superior. We need to increase the percentage of USA citizen college students studying science and engineering from 5% to more than 60% to emulate the Asian countries. The USA has way too many MBA financial geniuses, and maybe it is now time to close those classes. We need to stop the H1B import of low paid scientific and engineering talent, in order to create an incentive for our USA students to major in technical and scientific subjects that are needed to re-industrialize the USA. Only a positive balance of trade will protect the purchasing power of the US Dollar, or the USA will never return to the economic powerhouse position that we enjoyed during and after WWII. We must create tariffs to imports that will be sufficiently high to effectively prohibit all foreign imports in order to re-create our industrial base and export products that will improve our balance of trade, increase our gold reserves, and protect the buying power of our dollar.

I believe that this country desperately needs more people educated in science, medicine, mathematics and engineering if this country is ever going to re-industrialize rather than just print money and sell our future to support ourselves today without producing the things that we consume. We cannot afford to support any more artists, actors, theologians, musicians, philosophers, psychologists, historians, poets, novelists, political scientists, marketing experts, etc. According to the National Science Foundation and the National Society of Professional Engineers, only about 5% of the current college students in the USA are getting a degree in science, medicine, mathematics or engineering are US citizens. In the Asia the majority of the college students are majoring in science or engineering. I am worried about the future of my college age children, and all of the other children in the USA.

After we can no longer buy paper and print more paper dollars to pay for our imported products and government activities, we will be in deep trouble with no quick way out. It is going to take decades to re-create the US industrial bases that we destroyed over the past few decades. This will first require that our students study science instead of other subjects in our colleges, in order to create the technology and other things that support re-industrialization. We must emulate China, India, Pakistan, or die economically and have generations in dire poverty.

I believe that there is very little economic future in engineering. I believe that most students today (including my children who started in Mechanical Engineering but changed majors to easier courses) want to study business and/or economics to become Enron type Master Criminals, or like some of the other extremely wealthy master criminals of today. No person in his or her right mind would major in science or engineering since the pay scale has eroded so much (due to the import of foreign engineers who will work for just slightly above minimum wages and a Green Card). The Foreign Engineers might only be 25% as productive as US educated engineers, but they are willing to work for only 10% or 15% of the pay that US educated engineers are paid (or used to be paid) then it is twice as economically effective to employ foreign educated engineers when compared to U.S. educated engineers, except for the additional liability of their design failures.

Nations have always taxed the agricultural and industrial population to pay for providing National Security, Crime Prevention, Education, Fire Prevention, and other similar items that are necessary to assist and protect their agricultural and industrial production base. Our Productive Industrial Base could not exist with foreign invasion, rampant crime, protection rackets, corruption, sabotage, etc., so a portion of the money earned by this producing base has always been taken by taxation by all civilizations to pay for federal, state, and local governments to prevent these occurrences.

Maybe we can no longer afford to spend our hard earned taxes on National Service, social entitlements, welfare, environmental clean-up, pork barrel projects, free education, free medicine, subsidized housing, humanities, art, writing poems, make-work schemes, digging holes then re-filling the same hole, etc. until we re-establish our economic base.

Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, and Fastow swore to false financial statements, perjured themselves when testifying about facts, and generally lied about everything that they filed with the SEC. They all need to rot in prison until they die as a deterrent to other prospective Financial Geniuses. Their prison sentences should be proportionate to the amount of money stolen. I am sure that these Enron and Arthur Anderson type Master Criminals are studied and emulated by the current crop of Wall Street Financial Geniuses who studied their successes. We need legislation to make the CEOs become criminally responsible for any false company financial statements filed with the SEC. Many more CEOs need to be in prison for long periods of time.

The federal government bailout money is currently going to pay for the golden parachutes, new jet airplanes and bonuses to these same highly paid incompetent executives who caused these problems. These incompetent, arrogant, stupid, and selfish executives took so much money from the financial markets that they caused the systems to fail. The lowly paid US citizens is paying his hard earned taxes to them to continue their bad business policies that caused this crisis? Should taxpayer money pay off the bank loans that occurred when these financial geniuses borrowed money to pay stock dividends, in order to artificially drive up the stock prices, which personally enriched themselves through their stock option plans? How can we get rid of these financial geniuses that caused these problems without costing the taxpayer any more of his/her hard-earned tax money?

The Stock Markets are just gambling Venues for the public to make gambling wagers (investments) in ownership of publicly traded companies, securities, loans, and other investment vehicles. Investors just lost some of value of their investments, and there is nothing wrong with this loss since the value was speculation over and above the Balance sheet value of the companies. The investors should not have believed anything that their brokers told them about those or any other investments. If you review almost any of the SEC filings (on the EDGAR database) you will find almost all of the sworn information filed with the SEC is extremely false, most especially when you get away from the "Blue Chip" stocks.